Friday, 23 November 2012

TV dinners

In
the dim and distant past, when TV really was the centre of my childhood home's entertainment, I used to yearn for the lowering evenings that brought with them
the autumn season.

But
for most of my adulthood, television has played a considerably less important
role.

There
have been exceptions: Babylon 5, West Wing and a few more. But the advent of
‘reality TV’ was enough to make me glad I wasn’t addicted to the box in the
corner.

But
this autumn, there has been a glut of food scheduling that’s had me glued to my
seat – and thankfully it’s not all been Nigella flirting with the camera and wearing
white denim to cook beetroot.

Last
year, entirely by accident, I happened on a reality show that I was utterly
transfixed by – and this time, I was back right at the start: Masterchef:
The Professionals.

Now
I dislike the version of Masterchef that involves John Torode and Gregg
Wallace. First, it isn’t the Masterchef I remember with a certain fondness from
years gone by, where Lloyd Grossman hosted, in calming, mid-Atlantic tones, as
three amateur cooks competed in a very gentle manner.

It’s
odd that I remember that with such fondness, since it was on during a time
before I had any real interest in or love of food myself.

But
it’s also exactly the sort of thing that I don’t like about reality TV, with its tone of shouty aggression.

This
version sees Wallace transformed into a sort of teddy bear gourmand, with Monica
Galetti, the senior sous chef at Michel Roux Jr’s Le Gavroche, playing a bad cop role alongside him in the early stages of the competition.

And
then, of course, there is Roux Jr himself, for whom all the contestants want to
cook.

It’s
grown-up telly that doesn’t feel the need to pander to sensationalism.

Criticism
is dished out properly and fairly, while Roux Jr can also be seen coaching young
chefs, giving tips and being encouraging.

Okay,
there’s a bit of gurning from all three presenters, but this is ultimately
about real, serious skills.

Which
also means that it’s downright educative – and it’s inspirational too. Indeed,
last year’s series was exactly what made me want to learn to lay out a plate of
food better than a dollop here, a dollop there.

Only
last week, I picked up a method of cooking pheasant, sautéing breast very
gently in lots of butter. And as I found out last night, it works.

This
is top telly, and something that I look forward to for the four nights a week
that it currently occupies a slot on the goggle box.

But
Masterchef: The Professionals has not been the only foodie programming in recent
weeks.

There
was also Escoffier: Britain’s first master chef, which was introduced – appropriately – by Michel Roux Jr.

It
proved an interesting look at the great man – perhaps particularly in terms of
his creation of the brigade system of service in restaurants.

And
it was also a reminder of just how much the style of Roux Jr – and his father
and uncle – is influenced by that kind of classic French cuisine.

How do you eat your jelly babies?

Nigel
Slater’s Life is Sweets was a bittersweet trip down a sticky memory lane for
England’s answer to Proust. There is simply nobody else on these shores who so wonderfully writes about food and memory.

Seeing
old packets and wrappers brought an instant shot of nostalgia, even though I
don’t personally have the same sense of sweets as having been at the heart of
my own childhood as Slater clearly does.

But
I do have childhood memories around visits to the sweet shop (or primarily the newsagent), and as usual with Slater, it had an
emotional power that rang completely true even if you cannot identify 100% with his own experiences.

Calf's
Head & Coffee: The Golden Age of English Food, gave Stefan Gates the chance to
actually cook a calf’s head – which was interesting, although I won’t be trying
it myself any time soon.

But
this followed his rather astonishing claim that we are in the midst of a
British food renaissance – a claim made, without any hint of his tongue being
in his cheek, while standing in a supermarket.

‘Ah,”
I thought. ‘Here we go again, with the sort of wild delusions that Joanna
Blythman lambasts in Bad Food Britain.’

While
it is most certainly true that the restaurant scene – particularly in cities –
has improved massively in recent years, it’s difficult to believe in any sort
of wholesale improvement when the UK consumes more ready meals than the whole
of the rest of Europe put together.

Breakfast,
Lunch and Dinner gave Clarissa Dickson Wright the chance to explore the history of our
three main meals across three episodes.

Presumably
filmed before she decided that Leicester was frightening and not ‘her’ England,
there’s a certain irony then in her discussion of the origins of the cooked
breakfast going back to religious rules, given that her beloved Catholic church
has, in many parts of the UK, been saved by the arrival of migrants.

A
couple of particularly fascinating aspects of this trio of programmes was
learning that eggs were, a long time ago, roasted in the shell in the ashes of
a fire – and also that the first reference to a soft-boiled egg anywhere in
literature is in Jane Austen’s Emma, while Northanger Abbery actually references brioche.

It’s
also well worth noting that our habit of drinking beer with breakfast had changed iby the 1620s – replaced by the arrival of coffee. In other words, contrary to what some may imagine, Starbucks did
not introduce coffee to these shores.

So,
for once, it’s been a delight to sit in front of the television and lap up a
mixed menu of foodie treats.

And with iPlayer around, there's still time to watch some of these gems.

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London-based journalist, writer, photographer and artist, with one Other Half and three cats.
This blog is about all sorts of things, but mostly reviews. My interests include comics and opera (and even comic opera), cats, tattoos and art.
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